Application of the Karhunen-Loeve Transform for Natural Color

Images Analysis
R.K. Kouassi J.C. Devaux P. Gouton M. Paindavoine
Laboratoire d’Electronique, d’Informatique et d’Image
Universit4 de Bourgogne
BP400 21011 Dijon Cedex FRANCE
paindaveu-bourgogne.fr

Abstract lation between color components and storage of color

The current systems of images capture are based
on Red, Green and Blue (R, G,B) principles. But,this
model of capturing color zmages is different from hu-
m a n visual system. So, to obtain a representation
which approaches the human system, one uses the in-
tensaty and chrominance space. As this representa-
tion zs non-lanear, it introduces an instability of color.
Thus, to analyze natural color images, we use the
Karhunen-Loeue space, which allows a largest decorre-
lution of color components, a best definition of colors
a,nd a compression ratio increasing for very homoge-
neous images.
images. Finally, in the last part, we propose to anal-
yse the properties of color in some approximation of
KL transform. This study is based on eight kinds of
natural color images.
2 Transformation from RGB space t o
HSI and KL spaces
2.1 Transformation from RGB t o HSI
This transformation needs two parts [l].The first
one consists in separating the intensity and the color
data of a color ima.ge. This operation is obtained by
the following matrix :

1 Introduction 1
The calculation of correlation coefficients and the -31
z
spatial representation of color images allow us to
establish a comparative study between RGB (Red, -A
2
Green, Blue), HSI (Hue, Saturation, Intensity) and
I<L (Karhunen-Loeve) spaces. In fact, color images Y is the intensity (I) axis, C1 and C2 are the axis
olitained from current acquisition systems (RGB) give which define the color.
a. mixture of colors and intensity which prevents to The second part expresses the color by its Hue (H)
analyze them separately. It is possible to reduce the and its Saturation (S).
correlation between the color components by using the S = J m
HSI space. As the HSI transformation is non-linear, If S = 0 t h e n H = 0
the inverse transformation does not allow to find ini-
tial colors.
The K L transform exists since some years. Thanks
Else {
if G > B H = arccos
C1
if G < B H = 2II - arccos s
9
to the computers performance, the use of the KL 2.2 Transformation from RGB to KL
transform is interesting for color images analysis. This The vectorial relationship that allows to define the
transform produces a new three-dimensional and or- KL space is : K = A ( I - m l ) where I, m l , A and K
thogonal space with interesting properties for the anal- are respectively the “original color image vector” , the
ysis of color images. This space gives an optimal spa- mean vector of the“origina1 color image”, the trans-
tial representation of natural color images. formation matrix and the transformed vector [a].
This paper has three parts. In the first part, we
introduce the basic transformations which allow t o
convert RGB space into HSI and KL spaces. Then,
the second part is based on the properties of corre-

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~ R R$RG
CRGB= ~ G R~ G G~ G B
~ B R~ B G ~ B B
Table 1: Mean correlation coefficients
The analysis of the table shows that the compo-
nents of the images are very correlated in the RGB
space (the values are closed to the unit). In the HSI
space, the correlation coefficients are lower and we ob-
tain a quasi total non-correlation with the KL space.
3.2 Storage of color images in KL space
We express in the table 2 bellow the ratios of the
volume occupied by each image in RGB space to its
volume in K L space.
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I Volume KL I T I E,(%)
~ R B Parrots I, 13.1 x IO6 I 0.86 1 5.73
I
I
Planes 3.2 x l o 6 0.19 I 9.54
Woman I 2.6 x l o 6 0.16 I 3.72
1 SDheres
I -
I 45.3 x l o 6 I 2.73 I 13.30
I I I
I
I
Table 2: Volume ratios
T represents this ratio. E, represents the mean
quadratic error between the original color image and
the color image obtained after the compression in the
K L space.
The analysis of the table 2 shows that it is possible
to reduce the volume of spatial representation by using
the KL space. We explain the decrease by a concen-
tration of data around the two main axes (liL1, K L a )
of the K L space [4]. These results are very interest-
ing and allow to do compression on images. Indeed,
one pixel of color image is initially coded on 24 bits
in the space RGB. In the KL space, this number of
bits can be reduced without debasing the initial color
quality. Here, we have fixed the total number at 19
bits to represent one pixel in the KL space, that gives
a compression ratio of 20 %. In some cases, this num-
ber can be decreased to obtain acceptable compression
ratio between 20% and 30%.
In the next pages, we present, on the left column,
original color images and, on the right one, the color
images obtained after compression. These samples
show that the compression of color images in the KL
space is interesting : the quality of colors after com-
pression is nearly the same to the initial quality for
natural color images.
For the image ”SPHERES”, the KL transform leads
to an expansion of color. This result explains the im-
portance of the mean quadratic error obtained on this
image (13.3%).
As for the image “PLANES”, we obtain a quadratic
error of 9.54% what is high for an image, that seems
to be visually homogeneous, with very few colors. We
can explain this result by the fact that colors in this
image are spatially distant (Blue is far from White
and Black, even far from White). For colors that are
spatially distant, the color compression is not possible
by K L transform.
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 Parrots Parrots after compression

Planes Planes after compression

Woman Woman after compression

House House after compression

Lighthouse Lighthouse after compression

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 Pond Pond after compression

Mountains Mountains after compression

Spheres Spheres after compression

Put asides these exceptions, the compression of the color image. To accelerate the processing, it is nec-
color images in the KL space gives very good results essary t o know a transformation matrix for all color
for the images of our study. images.
4 Approximation of t h e KL space t o The approximation of the KI, transform by linear
transforms, which derived from Fourier tranform, is
study natural color images
well-known [ 5 ] . We extend results in the case of color
This part presents the approximation of the KL
analysis.
transform. In fact, some linear transforms (as discret
Fourier transform, Hadamar transform, Haar trans- DCT is given by the next relationship :
A -- 1 f o r U = 1 and j = 1, ..., N
form, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) or Discrete
Even Sine Transform (DEST)) are approximations of
u3 - JN
the I<L transform for decorrelation between the com- A,j = G c o s ( ('j - 2N - 1' )' f o r U = 2 , ..., N
ponents of color image. But, these approximations are and j = 1, ...,N
interesting only for stationary color images. DEST is given by the next relationship :
For this study, we just treat DCT and DEST trans-
Auj = Gsin(I-) for U = 1, ..., N - 1 and
forms.
J = 1, ..., N
4.1 Theory of t h e approximation of t h e
KL space A,j = &sin(-) for U = N and j = 1, ..., N
The main difficulty introduced by KL transform, These relationships allow to construct simply the
is the necessity to compute the transformation ma- transformation matrix (eigenvectors matrix of covari-
trix and the eigenvectors of covariance matrix for each ance matrix in the KL transform). We obtain thus

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 three orthogonal vectors that define the three images 5 Conclusion
plans (the components of the color image in the new This study shows properties of non-correlation and
space), that one can compare t o the three images de- storage of data by using the KL space rather than
fined by the three KL axes. Each vect,ors has three RGB or HSI spaces. In HSI space, we can not differ-
components: A,j with U = 1 , 2 , 3 and j = 1 , 2 , 3 . entiate Red and Black in the Hue component. So, the
4.2 Analysis of results KL space is important for the compression of color
We just examine for K L approximation, natural images. However, it is necessary t o specify that re-
and homogeneous images (with mean quadratic errors sults, on the compression, have been obtained for a
inferior to 6%). Thus, by computing the coefficients compression ratio of 20%. But, it is possible, in some
of correlation between components in DCT and DEST cases, to increase the ratio to 30%, specially when im-
spaces, we obtain tables 3 and 4. ages present very few colors and when these colors are
spatially neared.
Parrots 0.02 14 x l o 6 0.860 One can use an approximation of the KL space by
Woman 0.51 6.3 x l o 6 0.384 DCT or DEST spaces with natural homogeneous color
images.
House 0.07 6.1 x l o 6 0.370
In order to improve this method, we are now exper-
Lighthouse 0.28 2.9 x l o 6 0.180
imenting the multiresolution approach.
Pond 0.47 1.7 x l o 6 0.120
1
I

tXGmntains j 0.20 j 5.6 x l o 6 1 0.340 References

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